Beach Jar

Next time your family goes to the beach, go hunting for small shells, sea glass and interesting small stones. Bring home some of the sand too and make an etched memory beach jar using our Beach Designs stencil. The kids will have a lot of fun searching for unique things to put in their jar which will keep them busy for quite awhile! Great way to recycle pretty food jars too!

5. Rinse off cream under warm running water. Continue until cream, stencils and all masking tape are removed. Dry jar.

Decorating the Jar:

You can decorate your jar anyway you like, using whatever objects you have collected. Try to make a theme or scene though, so your jar looks better. Lay out your objects to help decide if your jar would look best as a beach scene, boardwalk, pier or under the sea theme. Whatever you decide, the main thing is, to just have fun and remember the good time you had finding your beach treasures!

The following directions are for how we decorated our jar and some of the little tricks we used to simulate things you see on the boardwalk.

Inside the Jar:

Pour a layer of sand inside the jar. Add some of the glitter and shake them together. If you have a bit of colored aquarium gravel, you can add that too if you like. Now drop in some beach finds and/or miniatures you have. Don't overfill it, you want to be able to see all the different objects without them piled on top of each other. Make more than one jar if you have more stuff!

To Decorate Lid:

1. Paint lid of jar, set aside to let dry.

2. Pier pylons: Cut wine cork in half with one half taller than the other. Wrap a little jute around each half. Take a knife and make a rectangular hole in the top of the taller wine cork. Glue the 2 pieces of cork close together on one side of lid and let dry.

3. Write Lifeguard on duty on the wood sign with the marker. Dab a small amount of glue on bottom of the stake and insert in the hole you made in the wine cork.

4. Buoys: String 2 wood beads on some jute, tying a knot on either side of each bead with some space between them. Glue ends of the jute to the lid so beads drape down side of jar.

5. Mix the sand with a small amount of glass glitter. You want the sand to sparkle, but do not use so much that the sand does not look like sand anymore.

6. Cover lid with a generous layer of glue. Press a few objects into the glue. Liberally sprinkle sand all over any exposed glue areas. Lightly tap the sand into the glue. Let set before shaking off the excess. After glue is dry, reapply a little glue where needed and sprinkle with more sand or add another object until the lid looks the way you want it.

7. Add a piece of fishnet from the pylon down to the buoys if you have some, Glue an object like a fish, lobster, starfish, or bird to hide the ends of the jute, add a seagull on top of one of the pylons, add a starfish on the netting.